What do STM/Academic publishers think about outsourcing?

The STM/Academic segment has been the avant-garde in outsourcing and offshoring its production services. Starting with outsourcing locally, publishing companies soon set-up captives (shared services subsidiaries) in low cost geographies such as India.

As an offshore extension of operations, captives soon ceased to provide the edge – in terms of cost, expertise and management. Outsourcing gave way to offshoring, and STM/Academic service providers are probably the most mature when dealing with outsourced (and offshored) publishing work.

Offshoring and outsourcing in the STM/Academic segment started In the UK with Macmillan setting up their captive in India. However, over the years several US-based publishing companies have started outsourcing and offshoring. Some of the top buyers of outsourcing services in the STM/Academic segment include Springer, Elsevier, Pearson, Macmillan, Wiley, Oxford University Press, and a whole range of mid-small publishing companies in the US and UK.

Since outsourcing as well as offshoring is quite well-entrenched in the business model of the publishers operating in the STM/Academic segment, it is of immense interest to understand and analyze buyer sentiments with respect to outsourcing. An insight into buyer sentiment will help us answer a few questions like:

What are the challenges faced by the industry and how has the industry changed in terms of perceived challenges?

What are the satisfaction levels with outsourced/offshored services?

What are the areas that still need improvement?

What is the buyer proclivity to outsource? Will smaller companies outsource more? The following chapters delve deeper into all these aspects.

How has the industry shaped up in terms of functional areas outsourced? For example, is there more demand for content (implying higher value services) or production (low value high volume services)?

Research Methodology

We broke down the 237 responses as per segments to generate this report. We further cross tabbed STM/Academic segment responses on the following:

Profile of the respondent

Size of company and

Geography

This break-down provided us with granularity on various aspects such as challenges faced, satisfaction levels, sourcing levels, cost savings, sourcing expectations, etc. This has helped us develop a comprehensive understanding of outsourcing sentiments within the segment.

4. Challenges faced by STM publishers
4.1 What are the perceived challenges for STM publishers?
4.1.1 Outsourcing can make up for lack of in-house capabilities
4.1.2 Technology – not a very strong driver
4.1.3 Does size impact the perception of “key challenge?”
4.2 Understanding outsourcing sentiments
4.3 Can outsourcing mitigate challenges – which ones?

6. Will outsourcing grow?
6.1 Proclivity to outsource
6.2 Where will the growth from?
6.2.1 Which publishers (by size) will drive offshore growth?
6.2.2 Which geography will increase outsourcing, which will retard?
6.2.3 Where will increased sourcing come from?
6.3 Preferred sourcing destinations
6.4 Which services will be in demand?